Santorum: Greens 'distort the truth'

Liberal politicians and green groups are exaggerating the dangers of hydraulic fracturing to scare people and raise money, Rick Santorum said Thursday in a wide-ranging rant against environmental activists.

The failure of cap-and-trade legislation in 2009 was the “politicization of science,” Santorum said.

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In fact, he added, the Republican Party is “the truth party.”

“You hear all the time, the left: ‘Oh, the conservatives are the anti-science party.’ No we’re not. We’re the truth party,” the former Pennsylvania senator said at a campaign event in Oklahoma City. “Because the left is always looking for a way to control you. They’re always trying to make you feel guilty so you’ll give them power so they can lord it over you. They do it on the environment all the time.”

Environmentalists use universal desires for clean water, clean air and conservation to “distort the truth in order to get you to give them authority.”

Their new target is natural gas, he said.

“We have to have all sorts of government regulations, because of the threats of hydrofracking,” Santorum said. “It’s the new boogey man. It’s the new way to try to scare you and those folks particularly not from Oklahoma and Texas — we’re sort of new to this stuff, hydrofracking, in Pennsylvania.”

“And they’re preying on the Northeast, saying, ‘Look what’s going to happen. Ooh, all this bad stuff’s going to happen, we don’t know all these chemicals and all this stuff,’” he continued. “Let me tell you what’s going to happen: Nothing’s going to happen, except they will use this to raise money for the radical environmental groups so they can go out and continue to try to purvey their reign of environmental terror on the United States of America. We will stand up for the truth.”

Fracking is an increasingly important technique for natural gas extractors in Santorum’s home state of Pennsylvania, which has vast shale reserves.

Many environmentalists have raised concerns that the process could have serious environmental impacts, particularly polluting groundwater.

Summers reported from Oklahoma City.

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 1:39 p.m. on February 9, 2012.